The consequences for Barça of avoiding trauma

BarcelonaAlthough the active Laporta sector on social media often points to Javier Tebas, the president of La Liga, as the main culprit for Barça's woes (not least due to the difficulty in registering players in the last transfer window), sources close to President Laporta himself assure ARA that the current relationship between the Catalan club and La Liga "is good." The person in charge of keeping the news in Madrid is Alejandro Echevarría, the unofficial vice president of Barça, but "Jan also has a good relationship with Tebas because he wants the best for the club," they make clear.

Barça's transfer window closed with Fermín staying., something that spares Hansi Flick a trauma, but doesn't alleviate the financial strain on Barça. How does the fact that Fermín has stayed affect Barça's numbers, and therefore the fact that the club isn't freeing up much salary or earning tens of millions of euros from a transfer? There are several answers to the question. In the short term, the impact is that Barça has closed a new transfer window without having reached the 1:1 rule of La Liga (every euro earned can be spent) and that, therefore, the financial situation has once again tied the hands and feet of the sporting directors when it comes to putting together the squad.

Joan Garcia has been able to be registered thanks to the long-term absence of Ter Stegen (what would have happened without that unexpected injury or without the equally unexpected injury of Christensen last year, which served to register Dani Olmo?), and Rashford, Szczesny, Gerard Martín and Bardghji thanks to several departures of players already a guarantee of a total of 12 million euros from Laporta's board of directorsIt's understandable that Nico Williams decided to renew with Athletic Club at the beginning of the summer despite Barça's interest.

The second answer to the question refers to how the figures for the 2024-2025 financial year, which Laporta has yet to present, affect Fermín's permanence. In this case, the answer is very clear: nothing. "A sale of a player after June 30 [the date on which the financial year closed] could only be accounted for in the 2024-2025 academic year if documents were signed before that date," Jaume Llopis, PhD in economics and business, explains to ARA. That wouldn't have been the case. Therefore, the sale would have had to be accounted for in the current financial year, in 2025-2026.

The non-normality

The third answer has to do with the long-term future. "This has been four consecutive seasons of transfers driven by financial engineering rather than sporting planning, where the ultimate goal seems to be reaching the famous 1:1 to save us. The reality is that equity remains negative and structural debt is sky-high. Once again, Barça is closing out a transfer window without reaching normality. "which requires sales, transfers and even personal guarantees in order to register," posted Marc Ciria, an economist specialising in Barça and a potential candidate in the next elections, in a thread on X once the market had closed. "The problem is not just with today's signings, but that the club has no room for tomorrow. Each market becomes an obstacle course," added Ciria. As long as the club's financial situation remains weakened, footballers of Fermín's calibre will be for sale in each market.

The great unknown

Be that as it may, it's impossible to make accurate predictions about Barça's real financial situation without knowing the figures for the 2024-25 financial year. And, according to the club's forecasts, these won't be made public until closer to the shareholders' meeting, which will be held in October. "The unknowns are knowing what the ordinary losses were for the financial year ending June 30 and knowing the auditor's report [Crowe], which should devalue the value of the television rights assets [Locksley Invest] and Barça Studios, as the previous auditor [Grant Thornton] already stated. VIP, according to what they tell me, the auditor only admits them with a 30-year accrual [of a total value of 100 million]," explains Llopis, who resigned from the Espai Barça Commission in August 2021 due to disagreements with Laporta.

June 2021 [Laporta's first] with the balance sheet closed on June 30, 2025. We would see that there is a very significant deterioration in the economic situation. We would see that there is less equity, despite the fact that we have sold 1,000 million in levers, and that the ordinary debt has increased with new credits, leaving aside the 1,500 million of the Espai Barça," analyzes the doctor in economics and business. "But everything has been refinanced until 2050 and the debt. The interest on this refinancing will be what will affect the operating accounts every year," he concludes.

On the other hand, Laporta's entourage conveys calm. "There's optimism about the numbers." But they also remember the president of La Liga: "That doesn't mean that Tebas will put spokes in the wheels, but he won't allow Barça's ship to sink because, despite his feelings being far removed from ours, he's not financially interested."